Transaction and order fulfillment processing have become automated in a variety of manners through utilization and deployment of technology. In fact, transactions with businesses can now occur over a variety of different communication channel, such as: websites, kiosks, mobile phones, and the like.
As a result, consumers engage in transactions with businesses through a variety of devices and interfaces. Further, backend business systems have automated fulfillment and tracking technology for purposes of improved transaction throughput and business efficiency. For instance, package delivery, luggage handling, and even mail delivery utilizes bar codes that are scanned during each stage of package handling. Some of these businesses expose that status of package handling to the consumers, such that the consumers can log into a web site and receive a current status and location of their anticipated packages.
Some businesses have even deployed technology to track different stages of food preparation, such that consumers can interact with a website interface to determine what stage their food order is in at any given moment in time.
Most of this technology is passive in the sense that consumers receive notifications only when requested by the consumer. Furthermore, in most situations, the consumer is unable to change or alter orders even with the technology to request current status updates for the orders.
Additionally, the present technology provided to consumers is proprietary in nature, which means the interfaces are dependent on the business providing the technology to the consumer. This means that the consumer has to subscribe and interact with multiple different interfaces and not all businesses even offer such technology.
Still further, the existing technology does not permit any easy mechanism by which the consumer can quickly identify his/her order, modify the order, and collect items to conclude a transaction; rather, the consumer has to repeatedly log into the interface and/or manually provide identification to business personnel to do these types of activities with existing approaches.